Time Magazine Article on High Speed Rail in Florida

[JaxByDefault]

Time Magazine ran this article on high speed rail in Florida in this week's issue. It discusses some of the political debate HSR faces in Florida.

Florida, like many of America's biggest states, can be frustrating to traverse. Driving between such major cities as Miami and Tampa is a back-numbing haul; flying between them, especially at the exorbitant fares many airlines charge, often seems impractical. And as the peninsula state's population has exploded in recent years â€" Florida is set to pass New York as the nation's third largest state â€" its road and air corridors have become more gridlocked and eco-unfriendly. Which is why Floridians voted in 2000 to build a high-speed bullet-train service between Miami, Tampa and Orlando. By 2004, however, then-governor Jeb Bush, who had insisted the estimated $6 billion cost would in reality top $20 billion, had persuaded Florida voters to drop the idea.

But the bullet-train idea is back, as it is throughout the rest of the country, thanks to $13 billion for high-speed rail (HSR) that was tucked into President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package. The application process for bullet-train bucks ($8 billion this year and $1 billion in each of the next five years) began this week. States like Florida are vying for big chunks of it â€" not only as free funding for a traffic decongestant they thought they couldn't afford, but also as a high-tech pump primer for the kind of higher-wage jobs that low-wage economies like Florida's need. Current Florida governor Charlie Crist, who has angered conservatives in his Republican Party by embracing Obama's overall stimulus program â€" and who has reversed much of Jeb Bush's antigovernment agenda â€" said recently that rail projects like HSR are "critical because we're still a growth state. Any of these transportation alternatives are good for Florida and good for jobs."

Read the full article...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1906025,00.html?cnn=yes

[BridgeTroll]

Great find JBD!

[mtraininjax]

Interesting, I did not see Jacksonville mentioned once. Of all the nerve of Time?!